Clinical Evaluation of New Patient Dedicated Blood Gas Analyzer Published

Sphere Medical has announced that the results of a clinical study evaluating its new Proxima miniature in-line blood gas analyzer have been published at the recent 35th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (ISICEM 2015).

A scientific poster, ‘Evaluation of a patient dedicated blood gas analyzer’, was presented by Dr. Tom Clutton-Brock (University Hospitals Birmingham) and Dr. Jess Fox (Sphere Medical). This discussed the excellent results of a method comparison study undertaken at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, and is also now published as a paper in Critical Care, or see www.spheremedical.com/content/clinical-resources.

The study included 20 intensive care unit (ICU) patients with a range of clinical conditions, including trauma, head injury, post-surgical recovery and sepsis. Patients were monitored using the Proxima patient dedicated analyzer for up to three days. Each time a sample was tested on the patient dedicated analyzer, a concurrent sample was drawn and tested on the hospital’s bench top analyzer (Cobas b221, Roche Diagnostics). Results demonstrated excellent agreement for pH, pCO2, pO2 and K+ between the analyzers, whilst Proxima could be used for trend analysis for Haematocrit.

The study also observed the potential of patient dedicated arterial blood gas analyzers to allow close monitoring of critically ill patients without leaving the patient’s bedside or net loss of blood for the patient. It concluded that, “Proxima is well suited to enable staff to more closely manage unstable and critically ill patients. This device may be of significant benefit to patients at risk of iatrogenic anaemia or those being treated in side and isolation rooms.”

Dr. Clutton-Brock also presented on ‘Bedside Blood Analysis’ at ISICEM 2015 within the Respiratory Monitoring Session. Here he highlighted how blood gas should be considered a ‘vital sign’ that requires monitoring to ensure the effective management of patients in the critical care environment, particularly for those that are unstable.

Maintenance of tissue oxygenation, ventilation and acid-base status is a major concern for most ICUs, since life-threatening changes in these characteristics can occur suddenly and so rapid results are often needed for effective patient monitoring and treatment. Dr. Clutton-Brock observed that the CE marked Proxima can meet these needs and presented further validation data demonstrating excellent agreement with bench top blood gas analyzers.